... so long as it does not materially impact your ability to provide basic necessities for your own wellbeing, food, water, shelter, some level of climate control, etc.

... and you are not directly, indirectly, or functionally spending other people's money on your hobbies.

No. I agree with you

Crocheting/knitting is cheap to try out but once you really get into it (and start worrying about yarn quality and so on), the money pit opens. Ask me how I know.

Not no-cost but cooking, gotta feed yourself anyway might as well have fun with it

Drawing, pencil and paper for start and drawing tablets are not that expensive for starter ones and there's free open source drawing software.

D&D costs $90 for the hard cover core book set and $0 for the pirated pdfs.

Biking can have a high upfront cost, but I've been using the same bike for 20 years with tune-ups and replacements running in the low three figures over that time.

I'm a big fan of podcasts, particularly ones that cover old movies. Criterion collection films are everywhere, they're dirt cheap, and they're classics for a reason.

Drawing (we should stop pretending one need expensive material do draw nice things, pencils and erasers are the only requirement, and a good sketch book can be found for less than 15 bucks)

Hiking? I mean, the world is just out there.

Other outside activities that need minimal equipment come to mind. You ever played discgolf? Or went running? Or geocaching?

But yeah, lots of activities aren't expensive. Draw something. Paint something. Sing! Or do some sports! Yoga only requires a mat if you do it naked.

Software development is free if you already have a computer

"needles/yarn after cheap"

That's a lie. My wife is into knitting and crochet, I've seen $300 purchases for yarn only, for just one dress. Not to mention $50-100 needles or swifts or yarn caking tools

Writing (free)

Maybe if you only write in dirt with your finger. Orherwise you need writing implements and something to write on.

Actually free things you can do:

• Walking/running

• Stare

• Singing

• Collecting rocks

• Stare

• Sleeping

IMO piracy and self hosting has great cost benefits.

Sure it costs money to buy a mini computer and a hard drive, but after, you can spend a long time building that library and it won’t cost you a dime.

And the computer and hard drive is more like an asset, you don’t really lose money when you buy it.

And it kind of pays you back, eventually you get a little tired of building your library but then you can use said library and integrate it into your lifestyle while you get a new obsession.

Oh no, the birb left a leg on the beach. Gotta buy a new lens to do better next time.

It's free until you start wasting money on hosting and domains, for websites that no one will ever visit.

I don't want to know how much I would be paying, if I didn't have a home server with fiber internet.

I wanted to kill a rat in my garden, so I borrowed my parents' air rifle. but the scope was too tiny to be any use at night, so I bought an air rifle with a bigger scope. but that rifle sucked and an internal part broke, so I bought a proper one. but I still have the crappy one and want to tinker with it, so I printed some replacement parts. but I want to make proper replacement parts that will withstand impact abuse, so I need to turn them on a lathe. but my lathe is just a wood lathe, so I designed and printed a four jaw chuck. but it's not any good for parts requiring more than one setup, so I bought a cheap real 3 jaw chuck. but it didn't come with the adapter plate to mount to my spindle, so I tried to buy one. but there doesn't seem to be any suitable adapter plate for sale that will fit both my chuck and my spindle (there's one that is close, but would require machining to make it fit - machining that I can't do without a lathe), so I decided I'll just drill mount holes through my existing faceplate. but that faceplate isn't true with the shaft, so if I want to mount my chuck on it and have it be useful then I need to turn it true. but I don't have carbide tools for metal lathing, so I needed to buy some. and I need to locate the holes that I need to drill to mount the chuck, so I drew up and am printing an template. and that's where I'm at right now, waiting for that to finish printing, so I can center punch the bolt holes.

so that I can mount a chuck, to turn a replacement part for an air rifle that isn't even 'the good one', to shoot a rat that is digging in my garden and making holes in my yard that'll twist my ankle eventually

hobbies huh.

Video games are a cheap hobby they said. So many options they said...